Katharine Cooper

In her characteristic black and white photographs, Katharine Cooper (ZA, 1978) depicts women, men, and children with a great form of respect and sensitivity. She is drawn to the slightly strange side of humans - the things that make people stand out from others, but in the most subtle and often very modest manner. Essential in her work is the attempt to get close with her subjects, to break down the boundaries between the people and herself, as though she is part of their immediate family. For her, a portrait is as much a representation of the maker as it is of the ostensible subject. The last three years Cooper has been photographing in the Middle East, in Syria (Palmyra, Damascus, Aleppo) and Iraqi Kurdistan. In 2017 her work was exhibited in L’institut du monde arabe, Paris.